Parents of the 15,000 Northern primary school children who sat the controversial 11-plus transfer test spent the weekend coming to terms with the results which were received on Saturday.
For the top 25 per cent, the news was good. A grade A will just about guarantee their child a grammar school place - very probably at their first-choice school. For those on lower grades, the outlook is less certain.
Geographical, family and community circumstances will be considered in the allocation of the remaining places at grammar schools which major on academic, as opposed to vocational education.
Just who will attend what school will not be finally decided for some months yet.
This year about two-thirds of all eligible pupils actually sat the transfer tests, the parents of the remainder deciding that a non-grammar school future is best for their children.
Teachers of 10- and 11-year- olds in the meantime are starting to prepare the next class of transfer test candidates in readiness for next November's two one-hour papers. It will be the last time they do so. Minister for Education Caitríona Ruane has announced the end of the tests which have been used since the second World War.
The Sinn Féin Minister is not merely scrapping the highly controversial tests. She has also declared her intention to scrap the principle of academic selection in the schools' transfer process and signalled her strong preference for children to decide at age 14 what course their education takes. It will result in the greatest shake-up in primary and post-primary schooling since 1947 and the advent of free State education in Northern Ireland.
She is motivated firstly by principle. The argument runs that academic selection benefits more middle-class children at the expense of working-class pupils and is therefore socially unjust.
It is also pointed out that while Northern pupils in grammar schools perform admirably well in academic subjects, thousands more leave school at 16 with no academic qualifications, signalling an alarming level of failure in the system.
Last year, some 1,100 children left school with no passes at GCSE level - the equivalent of the junior cert. More worryingly, some 12,000, nearly half of all school leavers, left school without GCSE maths or English passes.
Ms Ruane is also forced to act by circumstances, the first of which is the demographic trend which has left 50,000 empty school desks in Northern Ireland. This is projected to rise to some 80,000 in the medium-term, thus underlining the need for reform of second-level schooling across the board.
"Equality is my watchword," she told Assembly members in December, many of whom are deeply sceptical, especially on unionist benches. "Equality of access. Equality of educational opportunity. I plan to bring our education system into the 21st century and lay down a foundation that will ensure educational excellence and greater participation in the future.
"My proposals are ambitious, and require further work at a detailed level before a number of questions can be answered, but the direction of travel I wish to pursue is now clear, and the time is right to share that with you."
That was enough to trigger some of the most heated sessions the Assembly chamber has witnessed since devolution was restored. The friction has increased since. Last Thursday, the Minister appeared before the Assembly scrutiny committee, chaired by former teacher and DUP siren Sammy Wilson, to elaborate on her plans.
Outlining her case, she stated in some detail the stark facts surrounding schooling. They include the fact that the grammar schools, faced with falling student numbers, are increasingly taking pupils with lower 11-plus grades to fill their classrooms.
This is leading to the situation where non-grammar schools have falling registers and are fighting off decay.
Central to her policy preference is the notion of "election" over "selection". This entails pupils and parents making informed choices - or electing the most appropriate pathway at age 14, rather than sticking to an outdated and contested selection test at age 11.
She continues to fight off increasingly bitter attacks insisting she will retain the best elements of current schools provision while fixing the glaring deficiencies.
"We can do this by retaining and improving what is best in the system and by developing new pathways suited to the talents, abilities and aspirations of all our children. Our challenge is to develop a joined-up system."
It now falls to the Stormont Executive, itself supposedly a "joined-up" coalition of four political parties, to approve whatever she proposes.